I want to grow my organisation

It’s time to remember

Can you competitively position your organisation in today’s turbulent times?

The answer is yes.

You and your organisation will improve opportunities for growth and achieve a competitive position in turbulent markets.

When you can no longer cut, streamline or improve, you have to remember those skills we are all born with, creativity, innovation and enterprising behaviour.

Are you ready?

What we do and what we know

We tailor services for individuals, organisations and communities that want to grow sustainably. Our philosophy about thinking, creativity, innovation and enterprise is straightforward. We pride ourselves on translating the complex into the simple.
This is what will happen when you work with us
For participants

Improved ability to effectively and powerfully communicate growth opportunities both internal and external to the organisation

Enhanced awareness of the organisation regionally, nationally and internationally through the development of new networks and the strengthening of old networks. For organisations

Dramatic increase in numbers of opportunities to grow the organisation, reduce costs or enhance productivity—or a combination of all three

Energised staff who are able to see opportunities and take responsibility—as a result of the workshops staff are accountable for the success of the opportunities they identify

Identification of future organisational leaders.

Results

A global project management company had four teams present their enterprising opportunities to their leadership team.

The teams turned these opportunities into rigorous business cases and sold them persuasively into the organisation. As a result, the international Board invested in all four programs—when the usual organisational investment in projects is often 1 or 2 in 40.

ServCo and EduCo, both with international operations in Australia. ServCo generated over 600 opportunities for growth (business cases) and EduCo over 240.

Over three years ServCo and EduCo both

Benefited from dramatic rises in their employees’ ability to:

Think creatively and generate ideas 92%

Understand their organisation and its services and products 96%

Recognise opportunities for growth in their organisation 87%

The leadership groups in all organisations realised that opportunities are only made feasible by systematically applying appropriate methods, skills and resources.

We will design, shape and deliver these skills to suit your culture, market and plans for growth.

So you want to be an innovative organisation?

A creative mindset and creative and enterprising attitudes and behaviours create an innovative organisation. Within this type of organisation, ideas are valued. There is a constant search for the new. The question “How can we be better?” is often asked. What does this look like in an organisation?

Do you:

Use best practice and maintain the highest quality of your service or product?

Use the best technology at the right time?

Ask the question “How do I constantly improve my organisation?”

Do you search for new ways to work smarter? What do you do? Are you committed? Do you have the energy to make it happen? Are you ‘using’ a team to achieve your goals? How do you know when you got there? Are you planning to fail because you failed to plan?

Your Choice

Why is it that most start up companies don’t sell anything? Because about the fact they are out of frequency or they don’t understand their their customers. Most of us have to in fact understand the rate of change and the resistance to change and the fear of change of our target market and those customers.

Think about life. You know how easy it is in life to have a relationship? And what’s it based on? Communication, gaining trust and doing what you say.

And that’s really easy in life. It’s funny in business – we have one meeting and after that one meeting (probably 30 minutes) we think we’ve bonded for life. I don’t think so.

If we can’t match the frequency of our heartbeats, how are we going to sell products and services?

To develop an innovative organisation:

Build an atmosphere of energy and urgency

Try to surround yourself with people that challenge and question – people who are positive, constructive and upbeat

Make creativity and innovation ‘normal’

Celebrate and reward your achievements

Develop passion and realism, not optimism

How would you recognise if you were working for an innovative organisation?

What does it look like?

Here are a couple of key points that are often confused:

Leaders do not necessarily lead innovation, they drive it.

Leaders get involved at key points, creation and launch.

Big picture goals are the drivers, not specific targets in innovation.

Innovation is not a separate strategy. It must be linked to the corporate goals.

A project champion is vital.

A learning culture is essential.

Multiple sources of information is vital for innovation.

People who challenge conventional wisdom are needed.

This looks pretty straightforward, so how do we make it happen?

The things that we must remember when embarking on the journey of innovation is that everything we do should be:

ACHIEVABLE

MEASURABLE

REPEATABLE

We need to develop a plan. If you don’t have a plan, how do you know if we got there? In your plan you need to consider:

What you want professionally and personally.

Whether you want to do this for a year, for two years or for the rest of your life.

You need to include as many people in the planning process as possible. As the old saying goes, two heads are better than one.

Innovation in action

Innovative organisations possess a number of characteristics. To turn your organisation into an innovative one, you need to consider the following points.

Your organisation needs to focus on the market and the customer and recognise the importance of minimum effort for maximum results. The wallets (your customers) make you money. Quite often the wallets don’t know what they want and the organisation needs to learn how and when to lead them.

If your ideas don’t perform, pick up another one, screen it, plan it and bring it into play – you must learn to let go of great ideas that don’t have any commercial success.

The market doesn’t wait for you – you have to be in it to play the game. We must learn that the wallets’ perception is everything.

As an entrepreneur you are creative. How are you going to develop the attitudes and behaviours of holding creative people and their contributions in high esteem to continue to grow your business?

Encourage by example. Acknowledge new ideas and the need for taking measured risks.

Be proud that your organisation is innovative! Encourage everyone to look for innovative opportunities.

Demonstrate that change creates opportunities. Reinforce that our business embraces change and does not reject it.

We work hard to achieve professional and personal goals. When they are achieved, why not celebrate and reward success as soon as possible – after all, why are we doing this?

Innovation as ‘normal’

The next phase of strengthening the foundations of innovation in your organisation often include the following key points:

From reception to the warehouse to the cleaner to the managing director, everyone should be asked “What is the next opportunity?”.

A high growth organisation is fuelled by information. Information comes from open communication. The more people know, the less effort is often required to achieve a goal.

The trouble with most organisations is that they have too many ideas. What organisations now say is that ideas should be lodged on a website. In the ‘olden days’ these used to be called suggestion boxes. Why is it that suggestion boxes never worked? Because no–one opened them up!

Innovation as an institution

Can you imagine innovation becoming ‘normal’? I wonder what that would look like? Maybe you’re already working in a ‘normal’ organisation now! Or, do you want to create one?
For innovation to become ‘normal’ we need:

The recognition that organisations are full of people, and not systems, technology or products.

People make money, people create relationships, not systems, technology or products.

Most people favour recognition and encouragement when compared to financial reward.

As a leader, how do you get out of the way of peoples’ creativity and innovative behaviour?

Through open communication, trust should be established. If this occurs, what are you left to manage?

Encourage people to think and reflect as opposed to react (minimum effort for maximum result).

Lead by example and expect all to take responsibility.

It is important within the organisation to develop an attitude that with innovation some mistakes are acceptable – not too many though! Managers also need to be taught the skills to manage creativity and creative people.

Innovation – people make ‘it’ happen

To make things happen, an organisation needs to be proactive, create new ideas, respond to change when needed and continuously create the new and refine the old. It is also important for an organisation to keep every idea that comes up. The idea mightn’t be right now but it might be right tomorrow.

Ensure you record and add to your knowledge bank – after all, information is power. If you know it, and the competitors don’t, who’s going to win the game? Also remember to stay current with market events – keep listening, keep talking, keep learning.

Who’s driving this thing?

Your organisation can be compared to a boat in a storm. The roles include:

your organisation (the shipping company)

your team (the crew)

your organisational environment (the ocean)

you (captain)

Because of these different roles within the organisation, it is important to know your team. Thinkers within your organisation decide the route the boat should go. They specialise in concepts and developing leading edge opportunities. Makers are the crew. They are good at translating opportunities and are especially competent in executing plans. Traders are the people at both ends of the route. They specialise in connections, create alliances and leverage core capabilities.

What are you – a thinker, maker or trader? Quite often members of your team might be great traders, but you put them in the role of a maker. In this case, are you working hard or are you working smart?

Managing creative people

What do you think a creative person ‘looks’ like? Do you think of someone with their ‘head in the clouds’ who doesn’t seem to do anything we can measure straight away, or do you think of someone who can recognise the next opportunity?

When managing creative people, there are a number of strategies to use to avoid tension. These include:

You must shield and protect the creative members of your team.

You must include the creative members of your team in as many non–creative activities as possible. After all, they are part of your organisation.

What sort of organisation should I create?

You have a choice on what you would like your organisation to be. You have to decide on one of the following three types:

An organisation that makes things happen

An organisation that watches things happen

An organisation that wondered what happened

The choice is yours!

Easy as 1, 2, 3

The following themes and approaches produce the above results.

The time, effort and emphasis of each section are shaped to meet your specific needs.

So how do I start?

Creative thinking

Many organisations seem to behave in the market as if they have ‘no choice’. Organisations react to competitive business pressures rather than explore creative ways to move their organisations forward. In this workshop we explore the issue of choice—after all, ‘Who’s running this thing?’

Innovation and enterprising behaviours

An often convenient cry from organisations is that creativity is elusive, it can’t be taught and you are either born with creativity or you are not. In this workshop we explore why creativity has been suppressed from management activities and come to understand that it’s OK to be a ‘little different’ with our thinking. This workshop will give you the skills to unlock your creativity to create and execute strategies for growth.

Idea screening and selection

Often people in organisations simply have too many ideas. the screening guide is introduced so you can quickly assess the commercial viability of your ‘great idea’. You will be able to distinguish between a great idea and a growth opportunity as well as how to progress the opportunity to action.

The pursuit of an idea often leads to a significant waste of time. Save considerable human and financial resources that usually arise with “great ideas”.

Quickly find the existence of a fatal flaw within the idea, for example, there is no market, or someone else is doing it. There ten fatal flaws!

Most organisations have a hidden wealth of opportunities in products or services which often go unrecognised. At the same time, many of the new idea opportunities that do materialise are doomed to fail!

High Performance teamwork and communication

The ability of the team to persuade an audience to support their strategies, plans and tactics often hinges on a 15- to 20-minute presentation. We explore the fundamentals of powerful team-based presentations including:

How to build a high performance team

Empowerment is different – the old to the new

Organisational impact

Getting there, it takes time – tips, strategies and plans

Team presentation skills, styles and plans

Strategies to overcome customer and corporate barriers when presenting and persuading

The Toolkit

The toolkit comprises a variety of ‘innovative tools’ that, when used by your organisation, create and sustain lasting value. In this workshop we explore tools including:

Product and process innovation

Product and industry lifecycles

Industry and organisational value chains

Environmental and market place driving forces.

Entrepreneurial marketing

We explore entrepreneurial marketing. Key ideas include combining the traditional four P’s of marketing with the four C’s: customer cost, customer communication, customer convenience and customer solution.

Entrepreneurs use these variables to create value by aligning corporate, business and functional strategies to maximise strategic choices in today’s chaotic marketplace. We will also examine creating and maintaining brands. This workshop will give you powerful skills to create a marketing mix based on the enterprising mindset of customer pull, not service or product push.

Why customers and organisations often say ‘No’ – I hate that!

We explore customer and corporate barriers to the creation of value. We identify specific customer barriers that include usage, value, risk, tradition and image. We examine powerful corporate barriers including expertise, operations, resources, regulations and market access.
We also develop strategies to minimise both customer and corporate barriers to the creation of value. By the end of this workshop you will be able to predict customer and organisational objections and use these insights to create an even more powerful proposition.

Strategic Business Planning

Putting the plan together, ensuring the elements for successfully delivery are in place and you have developed your enterprising thinking to be able to enter survive and thrive in the turbulence of local, national and international markets.
We also push the boundaries of current thinking to enable you to devise and develop competitive strategy during planning. You then can use the powerful market place forces and critical success factors to create barriers for your competition.

About

Marcus Powe PhD will show you how to use creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship to capture your opportunities and deliver sustainable economic and social dividends.